Critic Reviews

It is all such gloriously smart stupidity that you cannot help but applaud everyone involved for sticking the landing.

Plane perfect movie for Gerard Butler solidify Gerard Butler brand action movie. Everyone know Gerard Butler not Daniel Day-Lewis, he even maybe not Bruce Willis, but Gerard Butler Gerard Butler, and sometimes Gerard Butler good.

It never gets convoluted or caught up in itself like movies with meta-sounding titles sometimes tend to do. It’s a ’90s style, R-rated action movie that just keeps moving, with very little fat, and delivers some true applause moments.

In the end, Plane is a high-adventure thrill ride. Unplug your brain. Suspend disbelief and strap in. No lectures, moralizing, or virtue signaling. Just an everyman trying to get home to his family. It may also serve as motivation to take a few wilderness survival courses.

There’s lots to enjoy in this aviation disaster thriller slash tropical shoot-em-up, with its uproariously blunt title high on the list.

The movie’s drama efficiently ratchets up the tension for its action to hit hard and move on. Again: Like an actual plane, it’s a marvel of craftsmanship so unobtrusive that it’s easily mistaken for mundanity.

It’s the junky, janky mid-winter Liam Neeson thriller we used to get with that first flip of the calendar, only this one stars Gerard Butler, and is directed by Jean-Francois Richet, whose two-part gangster biopic “Mesrine” was pretty juicy. This one’s more pulp than juice, but it’s enjoyable.

We’ve gotten too used to action as mere spectacle, explosions on a video screen. Plane takes time — not a lot of time, but just enough — to make this a story about people.

While Plane is meant to be a disposable object, the marks of intelligent filmmaking will make it linger as a positive point of comparison against various irritatingly tongue-in-cheek, cartoonish action films of late.

There’s always room for another first-rate action thriller, and Plane breathlessly packs its punches in spades.